- Release Date: 1981
- Genre: Shooter
- Style: Fixed Screen Shooter
- Similar Games: Galaga (Arcade), Phoenix (Arcade), Pleiads (Arcade), Space Invaders (Arcade), Galaxian (Arcade)
Game Description
In Gorf you control an Interstellar Space Fighter that maneuvers in all directions around the bottom section of the screen through five stages of outer space shoot-em-up action. Your mission is to keep Gorf's fleet of robot ships from conquering the galaxy.The first mission, called Astro Battle, looks and plays a lot like Space Invaders. In this mission, you must shoot descending rows of aliens while hiding behind a thin arch-like shield which stretches across the screen. The next stage is called Laser Attack. In this stage, robot ships, laser ships and Gorf robots fly and dive at you, shooting laser bursts. You must avoid enemy fire while shooting back.
The next mission is called Galaxians. Not surprisingly, it plays a lot like Galaxian. The Space Warp is next in line. In this stage, you must shoot Gorfs and Space Warp Fighters as they spiral out of a tunnel-like warp in space.
In the last mission, the Gorfian Flagship flies back and forth across the top of the screen, shooting fireballs towards your fighter. You must clear a hole in the ship's electromagnetic field and then explode its internal power reactor vent, which is the pink section in the center of the ship. When you complete the fifth stage, the action intensifies, and you must repeat the process again and again. At certain points during the game, an unseen alien narrator comments on the action.
~ Brett Alan Weiss, All Game Guide
Roots & Influences
Gorf borrows elements from Space Invaders and Galaxian. It was popular enough that it was ported to home systems such as the Atari 2600 and computers like the VIC 20. A sequel, Ms. Gorf, was planned but never released.~ Brett Alan Weiss, All Game Guide
Review: Overall
Gorf, a combination of different flavors of slide-and-shoot action, is actually historically important for being the first-ever multi-level arcade game. The game begins with a simple knock-off of Space Invaders, replacing the three shields with an even flimsier single arc-shaped shield. The second level has two clusters of five alien craft attacking with enormous high-powered lasers which span most of the height of the screen. Level 3 is another copycat game, this time using the game mechanics of Galaxian. The fourth level sees Gorfian robots spiraling out of a space warp, firing at the player's ship and generally looping around in hard-to-catch patterns, while the final level is a showdown between the player and a massive enemy flagship with only a single weak point (and its own shield, naturally).With its robotic speech synthesis and colorful graphics, Gorf was a hit in its heyday. It's also a curiosity in its combination of characters from other arcade games: the invaders seen in the Space Attack level are the Space Invaders aliens, and those from the Galaxians level are truly from Galaxian. (Since Bally/Midway had the rights to both games in the U.S., Gorf still managed to be lawsuit-proof; in actuality, Space Invaders and Galaxian were both originated in Japan by rival arcade manufacturers Taito and Namco.) Due to those same rights issues, however, virtually every home version of Gorf -- which spanned platforms from the Atari VCS to the Commodore VIC-20 -- omitted the Galaxian level.
The unique handgrip-with-trigger joystick first seen on Gorf coin-ops was later reused, in a more colorful form, in Midway's Tron arcade game.
~ Earl Green, All Game Guide
Production Credits
Created by: Jay Fenton
~ Brad Cook, All Game Guide
